An Introduction to America’s Music

ABOUT THE LISTENING GUIDES The book’s eighty-eight Listening Guides highlight important features of the musi- cal selections tha ...

MEDIA RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS StudySpace is an easy-to-navigate website that gives students an organized study plan to master the ...

INTRODUCTION ONE PEOPLE, ONE MUSIC? On a cold January afternoon in 2009, more than 400,000 people gathered near the Lincoln Memo ...

2 INTRODUCTION The concert’s name, We Are One, evoked the motto on the Great Seal of the United States, e pluribus unum (“out of ...

ONE PEOPLE, ONE MUSIC? 3 ALLMUSIC’S BLUES STYLES Clicking on the word “blues” at AllMusic’s home page leads the reader to the fo ...

4 INTRODUCTION defend its subgenre against others, whether arguing the relative merits of dark ambient and experimental dub or d ...

TALKING ABOUT MUSIC 5 TALKING ABOUT MUSIC The study of music, as the preceding section suggests, embraces the study of how peopl ...

6 INTRODUCTION Seeger’s “Chinaman, Laundryman” (LG 13.1), a song about racial and economic oppression, may strike you as anxious ...

TALKING ABOUT MUSIC 7 Most common, however, especially in music intended for dancing, is the four- bar phrase. In Leon Payne’s “ ...

8 INTRODUCTION piano, played by the left hand, consists of two notes per beat, while the upper part, played by the right hand, s ...

TALKING ABOUT MUSIC 9 (LG 7.1) quiets down around the one-minute mark (1:00), then suddenly gets loud again at 1:29, the change ...

10 INTRODUCTION nadir; even if you sing that opening as low in pitch as you comfortably can, you are likely to fi nd yourself st ...

TALKING ABOUT MUSIC 11 the strings of a violin when set into motion by a bow. If you could watch that string up close and in slo ...

12 INTRODUCTION by equal distances. Counting the number of degrees in a scale and comparing the distances, or intervals, between ...

TALKING ABOUT MUSIC 13 Johnny Comes Marching Home” is a widely known tune that uses the minor scale. Most people perceive the mi ...

14 INTRODUCTION Scales, as we have seen, can be thought of as patterns of intervals—whole steps and half steps, in the case of d ...

TALKING ABOUT MUSIC 15 fourth, fi fth, and sixth partials form a major triad. Lowering the middle pitch of a major triad by a ha ...

16 INTRODUCTION TEXTURE Let’s add just one last concept to our arsenal before we begin our discussion of A merica’s music. That ...

USING THE LISTENING GUIDES 17 This introduction covers a large number of concepts, but you shouldn’t worry if your listening ski ...

TIMELINE: 1540—1865 1540 Juan de Padilla teaches Indians in present-day New Mexico to sing plainsong 1698 The Bay Psalm Book, 9t ...